Today, we are at the .NEXT On-Tour event in Boston and are bringing more exciting news about continuous innovation. A number of vendors, including Nutanix™, offer hyperconverged solutions running on Cisco® UCS® C-Series rackmount servers. However, the majority of UCS® shipments are B-Series Blade Servers. Nutanix pioneers again and addresses this deficiency by announcing planned support for Cisco UCS® blades. Nutanix™ doesn’t stop there. Nutanix™ is also planning to support additional all-flash and storage-only rackmount server configurations, which will further complement our broad swath of support for UCS®.

Solving the UCS B-Series Blade Server Challenge

Today, UCS B200-M4 blades are limited to 3.2TB of all-flash raw storage. The limited flash, in many cases, is inadequate for storage capacity requirements. Cisco® and the other hyperconverged manufacturers have consequently limited their solutions to rackmount servers.

But just as customers drove Nutanix’s initial support of Cisco® C-Series, they also pushed for a hyperconverged option for their more prevalent B-Series Blade Server deployments. Cisco® customers from boutique businesses to Global 500 organizations, from commercial to government, and from Pasadena to Pune have been requesting Nutanix software on both UCS® blade and rackmount servers. Nutanix™ has responded with plans for the only hyperconverged software with integrated blade server support.

“We are excited about deploying the Nutanix Enterprise Cloud PlatformTM solution on our Cisco UCS® servers. This will dramatically simplify running applications in our datacenter. We’ve been more than pleased by the high level of support and cooperation from Nutanix and Cisco and look forward to expanding the use of our new cloud platform to other enterprise applications in the future.”

– Mandar Marulkar, CIO, KPIT

Nutanix™ will solve the storage capacity deficiency of B-Series blades by enabling customers to add storage-only nodes to their B-Series blade clusters. Once released, a pair of all-flash C240-M4SX storage-only nodes can be added to the cluster with up to 24 1.6TB SSDs per node. Nutanix’s unique ability to mix and match nodes with different compute:storage ratios makes this possible.

The storage-only nodes will enable UCS® customers to economically optimize the balance between blades and C240s. It will also enable them to scale storage independent of compute. Rather than requiring a large investment in a new storage array as the older unit reaches capacity, customers can expand their environments incrementally as needed.

Another advantage of this architecture is that, unlike SAN-based architecture, customers benefit from both the continuous enhancements to Nutanix™ software and UCS® hardware. With a single click, UCS® customers will be able to non-disruptively upgrade their blades and rackmounts with the latest Nutanix™ software, realizing any increased performance and additional product capabilities in the process. Similarly, Moore’s Law should enable newer nodes to have a higher density of VMs per node – thereby reducing overall project cost as the UCS® footprint expands.

Since the storage-only nodes run Nutanix™ AHV, no additional monies are required for virtualization software license fees. The AHV storage-only nodes can be mixed with ESXi nodes in the same cluster.

Nutanix Brings More Choice to UCS Product Line

“Most of our UCS customers are running B-Series blades. The Nutanix solution will enable us to bring the many advantages of Enterprise Cloud to their core virtualization environments.”

Joe Rumsey, CEO, Enterprise Vision Technologies

UCS® customers will be able to run Nutanix software on blade chassis with up to eight B200-M4 half-width blades per chassis, and with up to two 1.6TB SSDs per blade. The blades can be expanded one at a time (after an initial deployment of a base configuration of three nodes). There is no limit on the number of blades in a cluster.

Once support becomes available, the B-Series blades can run either VMware ESXi or Nutanix AHV, enabling them to optimize the best hypervisor for the best workload. They can also, if desired, run production VMs on ESXi but replicate seamlessly to AHV at the DR site.

By deploying the Nutanix Enterprise Cloud PlatformTM across their entire UCS® environment, Cisco® customers will be able to benefit from the agility and innovation enabled by Nutanix software. Among many other attributes, the Nutanix™ solution includes 1-click management, backup to AWS or Azure, and certifications and proven reliability in running mission-critical workloads such Splunk, Unified Communications, SAP, Oracle, and more.

Stay tuned for more great innovations from the Nutanix Enterprise Cloud Platform™ for Cisco UCS®. Also, please join us on the Next Community site and tell us what you think.Stay tuned for more great innovations from the Nutanix Enterprise Cloud Platform for Cisco UCS.

This blog includes express and implied forward-looking statements concerning product features and technology that are under development or in process and capabilities of such product features and technology, and our plans to introduce product features, including support for Cisco USC B-Series blade servers, in a future release. These forward-looking statements are not historical facts, and instead are based on our current expectations, estimates, opinions and beliefs. The accuracy of such forward-looking statements depends upon future events, and involves risks, uncertainties and other factors beyond our control that may cause these statements to be inaccurate and cause our actual results, performance or achievements to differ materially and adversely from those anticipated or implied by such statements, including, among others: failure to develop, or unexpected difficulties or delays in developing, new product features or technology on a timely or cost-effective basis; the introduction, or acceleration of adoption of, competing solutions, including public cloud infrastructure; a shift in industry or competitive dynamics or customer demand; and other risks detailed in our registration statement on Form S-1, as amended, filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. These forward-looking statements speak only as of the date of this blog and, except as required by law, we assume no obligation to update forward-looking statements to reflect actual results or subsequent events or circumstances. Any future product or roadmap information is intended to outline general product directions, and is not a commitment, promise or legal obligation for Nutanix to deliver any material, code, or functionality. This information should not be used when making a purchasing decision. Further, note that Nutanix has made no determination as to if separate fees will be charged for any future product enhancements or functionality which may ultimately be made available. Nutanix may, in its own discretion, choose to charge separate fees for the delivery of any product enhancements or functionality which are ultimately made available.

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